


the right to a name

by peppermintcas



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 03:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3311948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermintcas/pseuds/peppermintcas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The question still remains,” Charles said, icily, “as to what we’re to talk about. Are you here to talk shop? To seduce my students to your cause? To try and seduce <em>me</em> to your cause? Which you already tried, may I remind you, a year and three months—oh, Jesus, Erik.”</p><p>Magneto pulled away, eyes dark, an inch from his face. “Chess?” he suggested.</p><p>“Was that an innuendo?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the right to a name

**Author's Note:**

> Set after X-Men: First Class.

Charles was tired.

In all honesty, he had been tired for months. He had lost something at Cuba, and he had gained something, too: he had lost a friend (as if  _a friend_  could sum up what Erik had been to him—he had never truly figured it out, not really) and he had gained this— _blasted_  wheelchair, that Hank had designed to be completely and solely plastic, as if he needed any more reminders that Erik was gone. No, not even gone—actively  _against_ him, opposing him, rejecting him. It hurt more than he thought it would.

He was being ungrateful, he knew; Hank had worked hard on the wheelchair, and everyone had been very helpful and accommodating and understanding, except they just— _couldn’t_  be, because it was more than just his legs that were gone. They all skirted around the topic of Magneto around him. They turned off the TV, or switched channels, whenever reports of a  _terrorist group attacking government facilities_ came on; they stopped conversations awkwardly, abruptly, when he wheeled himself in the kitchen. They were teenage boys, he knew, and they were doing their best. But still. It was grating.

Charles had sought out more students in the year since Erik left—since  _Cuba_ , damn it. Charles was incapable of thinking of it impersonally, without inflection, without some modicum of regret and anger and loss. He knew it had to confuse Jean, the young telepath he had found and recruited; she was too young to rein in her curiosity, too young to maintain constant control over her powers, and he knew he projected viciously when he talked about Cuba with her. He knew she picked up bits and pieces of it, from his mind or from others’, in some way or shape or form. He avoided the subject as much as Hank and Alex and Sean did, if he was being honest. He was a hypocrite, always,  _always_ , when it came to Cuba, when it came to Erik.

“Professor, you’re doing it again,” Jean whispered, shaking him out of a dream (Cuba, again. Dammit). Charles sat up groggily. She was hugging a shapeless doll to her chest, her eyes round and shaky. “You’re—you’re projecting, I could feel it.”

Charles held out his arms, and she climbed wordlessly into his arms for a hug. “I’m sorry, dear,” he said, closing his eyes wearily. He didn’t want to go back to sleep. He knew when he did, he would feel the bullet burning a fiery chasm into his spine again.

\--

“You have got some nerve, coming here.”

“I know.”

“Has your regret gotten the better of your pride? A first, I believe, isn’t it.”

“Charles—”

“That’s Professor X to you. I believe you’ve forfeited the right to my name if you’ve revoked my right to yours.”

“ _Fine_. Professor, we need to talk.”

“About terrorism? About your attacks on the Pentagon, on dozens of government facilities? I could send out one message, one little mental nudge, and there would be government officials here in minutes. You’re the subject of a nationwide manhunt,  _Magneto_. It was unwise, to say the least, to come here.”

“Then why haven’t you? Sent out an alarm, I mean. If you really meant to, wouldn’t you have done it by now?” It was a challenge, not a question.

“Maybe you can’t tell I have, what with that blasted helmet on your head.”

Magneto hesitated and glanced around. The scent of sulfur still lingered in the air, signaling Azazel’s arrival and subsequent departure. Like depositing an unwelcome package at his front door, Charles thought, slightly hysterically. Like leaving a bomb on his doorstep.

“I—look, Cha— _Professor_ ,” Magneto said. His voice was brusque, covering up his slip. “We need to talk. Anyways, you wouldn’t call the government here. You know what would happen.”

Bloodshed. Murder. A massacre, directly on the front steps of his school, the one safe haven he has left to provide for his students, for mutants, for  _himself_. Charles did know, and he was unwilling to pay the price—and Magneto knew it,  _damn him_ , damn this to hell.

“The question still remains,” Charles said, icily, “as to what we’re to talk about. Are you here to talk shop? To seduce my students to your cause? To try and seduce  _me_ to your cause? Which you already tried, may I remind you, a year and three months—oh, Jesus, Erik.”

Magneto pulled away, eyes dark, an inch from his face. “Chess?” he suggested.

“Was that an innuendo?”

\--

It wasn’t an innuendo—and it wasn’t as if Charles was going to have sex with his sworn  _enemy_ , anyway, that would be too much of a betrayal. They sat at opposite ends of the chessboard. Magneto was twirling one of Charles’ bishops between his fingers, absentmindedly, the metal inlaid and grooved into the bottom of the pieces responding so easily to his beckon. This was the set that they had used, a year ago. These were the same drinks that Charles had set out a year ago. It was the same room, the same furniture, the same positions they sat in—it was getting to Charles, fucking with his mind. Nothing was the same. He downed the glass of whiskey in one go and moved a pawn.

Magneto was glancing up at him, every so often. He could see it out of the corner of his eye when he focused on the chessboard. He still didn’t know what Magneto was here to talk about, honestly—they hadn’t discussed much, simply fallen into the same contemplative silence that had held court even when they played chess before Cuba. He knew it was the lull before the storm. He knew it could only last so long. He knew that, eventually, something would crumble, and—

“Mystique's been asking after you,” Magneto said, and there it was: it was gone.

Charles fought to keep his voice neutral when he answered. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Hell if I know.” Magneto picked up his drink, studied the board, and a bishop skipped forward two spaces. “We only found out you were paralyzed last month, you know. Mystique was a little bit—upset. Pitifully small amount of information on you on the radar—Moira must have done a good job of wiping the records, then. She’s working as a nurse now. Doesn’t remember a thing. Your work?”

“Not one I’m proud of.” His voice was bitter.

Magneto paused, his eyebrows raised. In the dim firelight, the shadows arcing across his cheekbones from the helmet danced; they dissipated slightly when he raised his head to face Charles. “Do you forget it was her bullet, Professor?”

“Do you forget it was your hand that drove it into my back?”

“Do  _you_ forget she  _shot_ the bullet, knowing full well I would deflect it, knowing I would use my powers in self-defense? Must I always carry the weight of the blame?” His voice rose, sharp and angry and  _bitter_ , like glass cracking.

“ _Yes_ , Erik.” Charles slammed his glass into the table and wished he could rise to his feet, wished he could storm out like he used to be able to; dramatic displays were a little bit beyond him now, he thought ruefully, and whose fault was that? “ _You’re_  the one who  _left_  me on that godforsaken beach.  _You’re_ the one who abandoned me.  _You’re_ the one who took Raven and disappeared, and  _you’re_  the one who couldn’t even be bothered to check hospital records and find out what  _happened_  to me!” Charles kept his voice low, out of deference for his sleeping students—it  _was_  one AM, after all. And besides, he didn’t want the boys storming the study and making a scene. “Erik, you don’t get to— _what_?”

Magneto was staring at him, eyes narrowed. “You called me Erik.” His own name sounded foreign in his mouth, the syllables stiff and unused.

Charles turned away from the chessboard, chest tight. “Does it matter? Your codename is ridiculous. So is that outfit, by the way. No wonder your group accomplishes nothing—no one takes you seriously in a badly cropped cape.”

“It’s an  _aesthetic_ ,” Magneto said, sounding indignant.

“It’s bad dress sense, is what it is,” Charles retorted. “Aesthetic, my arse. If you’re making Raven and the rest of the Brotherhood wear those ridiculous capes too, I have to wonder why they stay.”

“Professor?”

Charles wheeled around, eyes wide.  _Damn it, damn it, damn it_. “Hello, Jean,” he said, locking away the hysterical laughter he could feel coming on, trying to smooth over his thoughts in vain. “It’s one AM, darling, what are you doing out of bed?”

“I heard—voices,” Jean said vaguely, her eyes like saucers and fixed on Magneto, still sitting at the chessboard. “And your feelings. Professor, isn’t that Magneto?”

“Telepath, I take it?” Magneto sounded vaguely amused.

“Yes, it is Magneto,” Charles said, resigned. “And he was just going,  _wasn’t he_?” He glared pointedly.

“What’s he doing here?” Jean asked, climbing obligingly into Charles’ lap when he held his arms out in a familiar gesture. She curled into his chest, hugging that doll—it was Raven’s favorite, when she was a child. Charles could never figure out what it was (probably what made it so appealing to Raven, being a shapeshifter). “Is he here to hurt us?”

Magneto rose from his seat, his helmet glinting in the firelight. “No,” he said, and he sounded so gentle, his voice low and rumbling and soft. Charles almost believed him. “No, I—I don’t hurt fellow mutants, and not children like you. I wouldn’t hurt children.” He met Charles’ eyes; Charles turned away, smoothing Jean’s red curls.

“I can’t feel you,” Jean said, plaintively. “Why?”

He tapped the helmet. “This,” he explained. “It keeps my thoughts in my own head. Can’t let telepaths like your Professor go rooting around in my head all the time, can I now? Then he could stop me so much more easily.”

Jean wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like it,” she said. “It makes my head hurt, and my eyes are all stingy.” She considered Magneto for a moment, cutting an imposing figure in front of the firelight; she wriggled out of Charles’ startled arms and went to stand in front of him, tugging at his cape. “Take it off?”

He looked startled. Charles took some modicum of pleasure in that, at least. He wheeled forward, eyes fixed on Magneto. “Jean, dear, go to bed.”

“Please take off your helmet,” Jean told Magneto. “It makes me hurt and it makes Professor sad. He doesn’t like it at all, you know. He misses you a lot. Or whoever you used to be to him, at least. No matter what he says.” She looked conspiratorially back at him, then at Magneto. “Were you in  _love_ , or something?”

“Jean!”

“I—don’t know.” Magneto crouched, slowly, so he was at Jean’s height, looking her in the eye. Jean gazed back at him, solemn. Her lips were twitching upwards. “Do you think we were?”

“It sure felt like it,” she said.

Charles held his breath, praying that Magneto wouldn’t—he didn’t even know.  _Would_ he harm a child? He wouldn’t put it past him, to be quite honest. He moved forward, slowly, trying to get closer, just in case—

Magneto swiped something from his cheek and bent his head.

Jean looked triumphant; she tugged at the helmet, and it slid off of his head into her hands, and it was like a TV, bursting into static-filled life, like a flower blooming in triple speed, like a dam bursting—

Charles had forgotten how Erik’s mind had felt, this past year. He had banned it from his own mind, erased all traces of it, snapped their connections; all of it in vain, it seemed, because he could feel it all surging back. It was finding something precious you thought you had lost; it was a mine, twined through with metals and sparking with gems; it was returning to the sky after healing a broken wing; it was coming home, oh,  _God_ , it was like coming home.

He was crying. He only realized this because Magneto—no,  _fuck_  that, fuck it all. It was Erik.  _Erik_  was crouching in front of him, one hand gripping at Charles’ knee, one cupping his jaw;  _Erik_  was stroking a thumb over his cheekbone, chasing tears down his cheeks. He was murmuring reassurances, and they were running through his mind, too, tripping over each other, pushing each other out of the way:  _Charles, look at me, Charles, oh, God, I missed you, I missed us like this, my pride is taking a serious beating right now but hell, I love you, I did, I_ —

Jean was beaming. He could see her out of the corner of her eye, still holding the helmet, sitting down and placing her doll inside, and then Erik was thumbing away Charles’ tears and kissing him—not like the one in the foyer. That was just to shut him up, to manipulate him into agreeing to talk, and Charles knew it. This one was something different, something else. Erik was whispering into his mouth,  _I love you’s_ and  _I’m sorry’s_ falling out of his lips and into Charles’, and they had a long way to go, but this was a start. This was something new, something that could, perhaps, change whatever it was between them for the better, reforging the bond that had gotten so twisted out of shape.

Perhaps Charles hadn’t lost Erik as thoroughly as he thought he had, after all.

Jean sucked her thumb into her mouth and smiled.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is saved in my Documents as "how did i EVEN" and I think that's a good enough summary for this fic.


End file.
